For the past 12 years the American government has issued a "Trafficking in Persons Report", which ranks nearly every country on their compliance with America's Trafficking Victims Protection Act (though the only sanction is opprobrium).

Welcome US as International police, welcome US as Human Rights Guards.

could anybody explain the implication of it to me? i mean, to me its more like the developing world still has a long journey ahead to catch up the tier 1, which is sth being taught since i was in primary school. any new ideas?

To where are Zimbabweans trafficked? Is South Africa a major destination, for those being forced out of the country - like Mexico - US? How can there be no data on Somalia? Does anybody even know what's cooking in the kitchen - is it spicy terrorism? And why is there no data for Greenland and French Guyana if these are both closely tied to Norway and France, respectively? And, why am I asking so many questions?

You Sir/Madam, are correct - Denmark it is, my bad. Here then is the amended comment:

To where are Zimbabweans trafficked? Is South Africa a major destination, for those
being forced out of the country - like Mexico to the US? How can there be no data on
Somalia? Does anybody even know what's cooking in the kitchen - is it spicy
terrorism? Probably not, nobody knows. And why is there no data for Greenland and French Guyana if these are
both closely tied to Denmark and France, respectively? And, why am I asking so many
questions?

The problem with the State Department report is that it focuses on international trafficking. Cambodia and Bangladesh, both known for child exploitation, are ranked in tier 1 and tier 2 respectively, only because the victims, who tend to be native, aren't taken out of the country. I am sure UNICEF figures would disagree with some of these rankings. An estimate of victims in forced labor relative to total population would be a better measurement.

Read the first two chapters of Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," entitled "Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress" & "Drawing the Color Line" respectively, then consider what this graph would look like if it accounted for total-humans-trafficked since 1492. The US wouldn’t be light pink, and this American hopes that it is out of a sense of reparation to humankind, not hubris, that we created such a metric.

Silly comment...past sins do not preclude one from trying to improve things and, by the way, the child does not bear guilt for the sins of the far removed ancestor. If so, since we all came from peoples who at some point conquered, enslaved and slaughtered others your logic would suggest universal silence on these matters. Judging the long past by today's moral standards may well puff you up with righteousness, but it serves no purpose whatsoever. Learn from the past, don't repeat the mistakes made, but don't for a moment imagine that you are superior simply by being born centuries later.

Since the U.S. must be in the top tier of any benchmark created by the U.S. government, by definition it's going to be complete bullshit. Human trafficking involves two nations, one rich and one poor usually. Faulting poorer nations for the exploitation of their people by pervs in richer countries is rank hypocrisy. The United States is a major destination for human trafficking, as are Germany, Norway, Italy, and the Netherlands. These are the places where sexual exploitation of women and children occur. It sickens me that nations which are the worst offenders in terms of basic human decency are lauded as belonging in "tier-one."

"The United States is a major destination for human trafficking, as are Germany, Norway, Italy, and the Netherlands. These are the places where sexual exploitation of women and children occur."

Perhaps, but they are not the only ones. Many women from ex-Soviet countries, Asia and Africa are trafficked to Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and U.A.E. There, they even have a lesser chance of somebody speaking up for them.

Did you take as many as 2 minutes to actually open up the report and read it? The report indeed takes the source and destination both into consideration when issuing these ratings. A more detailed description for each country is provided in the document. I'm sorry that your country rated so low on the list but that is no reason to castigate the US. The very fact that the US produces such a benchmark in and of itself is a positive for me. I can only guess how many countries had their feathers ruffled by this report and started to take at least some steps to prevent themselves from a poor showing last year.

The fact that 29 countries had some improvement is perhaps at least partly attributable to this report and the pressure that it will create in the form of all the third party organizations that will take those countries to task citing this report. Credit where it's due please!

I wonder why the lower part of Morocco they have no data for, Also maybe Cuba has low compliance because there isn't much trafficking going on in Cuba in the first place. They are super tough with who comes in and out and I go every year, I never see foreign girls looking for tourists to accompany. Its always a Cuban woman or man.

Man, come on and think before you open your mouth. A grand total of 1,000 people were trafficked from Romania last year. That's something bad but look at the FBI's claim w/r/t craigslist and then backpage, et al and then let's talk about economies.

There have been A LOT of problems with how sex trafficking has been counted in the past. Hopefully the science in this study is a lot better.

In some places, simple prostitutes and the like have been counted (forced or not)...and in others, no one has really been counted. We need to make sure that there are clear definitions for what "sex trafficking" means. A person grabbed off the street and put in some dingy brothel is a lot different that someone who chooses to be a prostitute for purely economic or personal reasons. Oh you may not condone what he or she chooses to do with their body, but that's not your concern.

...and that is why society need the work of charity which upheld the kinds of social issues and concern affecting the poor, victimized humans on this planet earth we call home. The charity work is done to help facilitate the welfare systems put in place for this societal ills of human trafficking. Human trafficking extends to all social ills, and one of them is prostitution, whether it is a choice or being victimzed.

No, human trafficking is human trafficking. Period. It doesn't extend to anything else. That's the point. Those other ills are other things entirely.

As for prostitution, it in and of itself is neither victimization nor human trafficking....as long as it is a chosen vocation.

You are of course free to debate me on this issue all you want..but I've heard it all before. From a conventional-religious perspective, you can pose the argument as one of "you - or the prostitute - is/are going to hell" (to which I respond, ok...prove it). From a feminist-religous perspective, you can pose the argument as one that a woman making said choice with her body is somehow is oppressive to her (to which I respond, with the simple question: you do realize that this statement is self contradictory, right?...and then I would point you towards some of Wendy McElroy's writings on the subject).

I've heard just about every argument against it, and they all fall on one simple premise: they are all ideological in that they all limit the choices consenting adults do with their own bodies for no other reason then humans seem to be puritanical in nature when it comes to sex.

So then it is a "report" with absolutely no rigor and therefore no meaning. Talk about wishy-washy and purely political. Why? Because if the countries are non-compliant, what does that mean? Perhaps they have no trafficking. Likewise, a country could be completely compliant, and be trafficking out the whazoo. With no rigor, the whole exercise is meaningless.

But what does it tell you? That some countries aren't in compliance. If your real goal is eradication of human trafficking, then what does compliance or non-compliance do for you? Who knows without measuring actual incidents.
So yeah, it could be a piece - but it could be a piece to the wrong puzzle!
It is reports such as these which give politicians such a bad name. If you agree with the "results" or "conclusions" then you find the politicians "good." But if you disagree with results on ground that they don't exist, then you find the politicians "evil" or "bought" by special interests.
If it can't be rigorous then less is more...sometimes it's best for the politicians to keep their mouths shut.

It tells you which countries have a rigorous set of laws in place to prevent/deter/criminalize human trafficking. Surely, you would agree that such laws are important to help eradicate human trafficking, right?

Will these laws alone do it? Of course not. Does the fact that a country have rigorous laws mean that it has no human trafficking? Of course not. If a country lacks rigorous laws, does it necessarily have human trafficking? Of course not.

However, wouldn't it be a good step for EVERY country to have rigorous laws on the books on this topic? Doesn't this report get at which countries are on the road to that goal and which aren't?

I particularly like the shadows cast by the land masses. I didn't realize we had the technology to float our continents in the sky to escape the effects of population and global warming yet, a la Laputa in Gulliver's travels or Cloud sky in Star wars. It must be very easy to human traffic in the dark shadowy, presumably, waters underneath the continents.

I thought the same. But it works if the world is indeed flat. Cynicism aside, do we really need the superfluous shadows for land masses, especially if the figure relies on shading to represent the data? The special effects department really went to town on this one.

It almost seems as if The Economist always uses the same picture, whether they're talking about GDP, human rights, or anything else.

- Africa is always black or no data.
- Middle East is pretty bleak as well.
- China, Russia, India and South America are so-so (occasionally reliable data not available in Russia and/or China).
- America is mostly good.
- Europe, Australia, and Japan are shiny and happy.

...when there is freedom of thought, that is why our thinking patterns developes into a sort of "reedom" of mind, that becomes fluid with all kinds of creativity. When a country produces the freethinking society, that is where the creativity flows. Just imagine the opposite scenario?...this is where freedom of thought is constricted into oblivion.

I seriously don't get your complaint. Are you telling me that the Economist must pretend everything is well in Africa, or pretend that data coming in from Somalia are top-notch, or that people in Sweden are miserable - all for the sake of pleasing an easily-offended African/Middle Eastern/Chinese/South American person like you?

You are welcome to create your own fairy world where the world is upside down, but you are not going to make a newspaper report your stupid fantasies.

No complaint intended. I was mostly just sharing an amusing observation. I was also hinting that we should be wary of potential biases though I don't see any. The shades of the graph matches the darkness in the stories I hear from immigrants.

G7 was a "club" of largest liberal market-based economies. G8 was thrown in as a bone to Russia in the 90es, if my memory serves me right.

G20 is a lunacy. It's neither the club of largest economies, nor the club of most influential economies, nor the club of democracies, nor a regional alliance. True, there are close economic ties between different pairs of countries, but same could be said about a simple random draw of 20 economies out of top 50.